Psychosis is a symptom of an underlying disease. The causes can be many – drugs, depression, schizophrenia, dementia, medication reactions, infection-induced, and the list goes on. Psychosis is a detachment from reality. It is when someone experiences hallucinations and/or delusions and lacks the insight that they are experiencing this detachment from reality.

What this might look like is the person walking down the street ranting to themselves about the FBI following them. Or a friend, after taking LSD or another drug, sees a humongous ice cream cone floating in front of them, and believes everyone else can see it. Or it may be the loved one expressing beliefs that don’t quite make sense. These beliefs and thoughts have crept in slowly, and you’re wondering if it’s you or them that doesn’t make sense. Is it really feasible that they have a great aunt who left them loads of money? And they must travel to the other side of the world to find this obscure cave, where she buried the money?

We often don’t recognize psychosis when it’s right in front of us. And part of the diagnostic criteria is that the person who is experiencing psychosis lacks the insight that their experience is a hallucination and/or delusion.

The longer psychosis goes untreated, the longer the underlying cause goes untreated. Often, the longer someone has been experiencing psychosis, the harder it is to treat. Additionally, the delay in treatment increases the individual’s risk of experiencing future episodes.

It’s estimated that 10 to 15 people out of every 100,000 a year develop psychosis (NAMI, Psychosis). This is a similar rate to how many people die from car accidents each year. Additionally, approximately 15 out of every 100,000 people have Type 1 Diabetes. We freely talk about and have easy access to education about car accidents and Type 1 Diabetes. So why not psychosis? It could help a loved one.